| My Girl | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Howard Zieff |
| Written by | Laurice Elehwany |
| Produced by | Brian Grazer |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Paul Elliott |
| Edited by | Wendy Greene Bricmont |
| Music by | James Newton Howard |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 102 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $17 million[1] |
| Box office | $121.5 million |
My Girl is a 1991 Americancoming-of-ageromanticcomedy-drama film directed byHoward Zieff, written by Laurice Elehwany, and starringDan Aykroyd,Jamie Lee Curtis,Macaulay Culkin, andAnna Chlumsky in her first role in a major motion picture. A book based on the film was written by Patricia Hermes.[2]
The film tells the story of an 11-year-old girl living inMadison, Pennsylvania, during the summer of 1972. The film's title refers to the classic 1964song of the same name byThe Temptations, which is also featured in the film's end credits.
The film was released byColumbia Pictures on November 27, 1991, and grossed $121 million on a budget of $17 million. A sequel,My Girl 2, was released in 1994.
Vada Sultenfuss is an 11-year-old girl living inMadison, Pennsylvania in the summer of 1972. Her father, Harry Sultenfuss, operates the town's funeral parlor, which is also their home. Her upbringing leads her to suffer fromhypochondria and develop an obsession with death, which her father fails to understand. Also living with them are "Gramoo", Vada's paternal grandmother, whose recentdementia accentuates Vada's worries, and Harry's older brother Phil.
Vada hangs out with Thomas J. Sennett, an unpopular boy her age who isallergic to "everything". Other girls tease them, thinking they are more than just friends. Thomas J. often accompanies Vada when she visits the doctor, who assures her that she is not sick.
During the summer, Vada befriends Shelly DeVoto, the new makeup artist at the funeral parlor, who provides her with guidance. Vada has a crush on Mr. Bixler, her fifth-grade teacher, and hears about an adult poetry writing class he is teaching. Wondering how to pay for the class, she takes money from a cookie jar in Shelly's camper. During her first class, when suggested to write about what is in her soul, Vada fears that she killed her mother, whodied two days after childbirth.
When Harry and Shelly start dating, Vada's attitude towards Shelly changes. One night, she follows them to a bingo game and brings Thomas J. along to disrupt it. On theFourth of July, when Shelly's ex-husband Danny shows up, Vada hopes that Shelly will take him back, to no avail.
Following the holiday, Vada and Thomas J. knock down a beehive in the woods. Vada loses hermood ring in the process, and while they look for it, the bees swarm and force them to run away. Harry invites Vada and Shelly to a carnival; she becomes distressed when he and Shelly announce their engagement there, so she proposes bumper cars so she can release her frustration by ramming her repeatedly. Later, it leads her to contemplaterunning away.
Later, Vada screams when she sees that she is bleeding, but Shelly explains that she is experiencing herfirst period. As Vada accepts that this happens only to girls, she angrily rebuffs Thomas J. when he comes to visit. A couple of days later, the friends sit under a willow tree, wondering what a first kiss feels like, so they share one.
After Vada heads home, Thomas J. returns to the woods to search for her mood ring. Unaware that the beehive they knocked down is still active, he iskilled by the bees due to his allergy.[3]
Harry delivers the tragic news to Vada, who stays in her bedroom for a full day. Shelly suggests that he console Vada, but he brushes her off. Shelly urges him to realize the significance of his daughter's pain. When Vada leaves her bedroom and sees Thomas J.'s body in his casket, she runs away out of grief to Mr. Bixler's house, wanting to stay with him, but flees after discovering that he is engaged.
Vada grieves by the willow tree where she and Thomas J. hung out. When she returns home, everyone is relieved, including Shelly, whom Vada begins to accept as her future stepmother. Her grief also mends the rift between her and her father, who assures Vada that her mother's death was not her fault.
Toward the end of summer, Vada and her father comfort Mrs. Sennett, who still struggles with her son's death. She returns Vada's mood ring, which Thomas J. had found. On the last day of her writing class, Vada reads a poem in memory of her best friend.
The screenplay, written by Laurice Elehwany, was originally titledBorn Jaundiced, and was purchased byImagine Entertainment in July 1990.[4] On August 24, 1990, it was reported inDaily Variety that the screenplay had been re-titled toI Am Woman, but was subsequently changed to its final title,My Girl, in the spring of 1991.[4] Elehwany based the fictional setting of Madison on the small towns in southwestern Pennsylvania where she grew up.[4]
Culkin and Chlumsky were cast in the lead roles of Thomas J. and Vada, respectively, in January 1991.[4] Filming took place inBartow andSanford, Florida beginning in February 1991.[4] Exteriors of the Sultenfuss home were supplied by a real Victorian home in Bartow, while the house's interiors were built on a soundstage in Orlando.[4]
WhenMy Girl was submitted to theMotion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in September 1991, it was ratedPG-13.[4] Later that month, the film's producers won an appeal to have the film reclassified to a PG rating.[4]
My Girl was released on November 27, 1991.[4]
The film holds a 57% score onRotten Tomatoes based on 23 reviews. The site's consensus states: "My Girl has a mostly sweet story and a pair of appealing young leads, but it's largely undone by its aggressively tearjerking ending."[5]Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, writing: "The beauty in this film is in its directness. There are some obligatory scenes. But there are also some very original and touching ones. This is a movie that has its heart in the right place."[6]Owen Gleiberman ofEntertainment Weekly praised Chlumsky's performance in the film, but conceded that "there’s something discomforting about a movie that takes the experience of an audacious, conflicted child and reduces it to: She needs to Confront Her Feelings.My Girl has some sweet, funny moments (the cast is uniformly appealing), yet it unfolds in a landscape of paralyzing, pop-psych banality."[7]
Film criticCaryn James cited the film as being part of a "trend toward stronger, more realistic themes in children's films", specifically its representations of death, specifically that of a young child.[8] David Kehr of theChicago Tribune wrote of the film: "IfMy Girl helps stimulate family discussions of death and loss, it will certainly have done some good in the world. But at the same time, its aesthetic interest is virtually nil... ThoughMy Girl seeks to stir large, devastating emotions, Zieff seems afraid to touch on anything too difficult or unpleasant, lest it alienate his audience. The results are curiously gutless and unmoving, as Zieff finds himself stuck with a sentimentality without substance, a poetry without pain."[9] Peter Rainer of theLos Angeles Times was similarly critical of the film's "syrupy" elements, concluding: "The mixture of winsomeness and deadpan frights inMy Girl ought to be weirder and more interesting than it is. After all, a girl who survives a household where bodies are embalmed in the basement is the kind of plucky heroine that movies about kids need right now. Or movies about adults, for that matter."[10]
Janet Maslin ofThe New York Times was critical of the screenplay for being made up of "loose ends bound together only by intimations of mortality and family crisis," summarizing: "It's not hard for the maudlinMy Girl to make its audience weepy at the sight of America's favorite kid in an open coffin. But it is difficult for this film to mix the sugary unreality of a television show with such a clumsy and manipulative morbid streak."[11]Variety noted: "Plenty of shrewd commercial calculation went into concocting the right sugar coating for this story of an 11-year-old girl's painful maturation, but [the] chemistry seems right."[12]
My Girl opened at No. 2 with $12,391,783, grossing $59,489,799 domestically,[1] and $62 million internationally[13] for a worldwide total of $121,489,799.
The soundtrack of the film contains several 1960s and 1970s pop hits, in addition tothe title song (byThe Temptations), including "Wedding Bell Blues" (The 5th Dimension), "If You Don't Know Me by Now" (Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes), "Bad Moon Rising" (Creedence Clearwater Revival), "Good Lovin'" (The Rascals), and "Saturday in the Park" (Chicago). When Vada gets upset, she plugs her ears and sings "Do Wah Diddy Diddy", theManfred Mann version of which is also included on the soundtrack album. In addition, Vada and Thomas J. play "The Name Game" and sing "Witch Doctor", while Vada has posters of the Broadway musicalHair,the Carpenters, andDonny Osmond on her bedroom wall.
| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| Australia (ARIA)[14] | Platinum | 70,000^ |
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. | ||
